UN
Secretary General Ban Ki-moon arrived in Syria
on Tuesday for high-level meetings on the international
court to try suspects in the assassination of former
Lebanese Premier Rafik Hariri, as well as other issues
relating to Lebanon
and the region. It is safe to guess that President
Bashar Assad and other officials adopted the same tone
during their talks with the UN chief that Syria
has recently taken toward the UN investigation into the
killing: one of the utmost compliance and cooperation.
As an editorial in the state-run Tishrin newspaper
suggested on Tuesday, Ban was probably given the
impression that there is "a lot of common ground
that can be built on."

But
the international community ought to also take note of
two key developments that were unfolding in Syria
on the same day as the secretary general's visit. As Ban
was arriving in Damascus, a Syrian court sentenced a
leading human rights lawyer to five years in prison for
questioning his government's policy toward Lebanon.
Anwar al-Bunni's "crime" was to sign a
petition calling for dialogue and diplomatic relations
with the government in Beirut. Also on Tuesday, Syrian
officials were counting votes and were due to announce
the results of the country's recent parliamentary
elections, not that the outcome of the vote was not
predictable months in advance. Both the farcical
elections and the jailing of a political dissident
suggest that regardless of whatever President Bashar
Assad tells Ban or any other visiting international
official about his government's intentions, the primary
concern of the ruling Baath Party is with engineering
its own survival.

Although
Assad was unlikely to have been completely forthcoming
during Tuesday's meetings, Ban will no doubt come away
from Damascus with a better idea about the nebulousness
of the Syrian regime and the challenges that the
international community faces in getting the country to
modify its behavior toward Lebanon. This is not to say
that the international community should give up its
current quest to coax Syria's
cooperation and instead seek to further destabilize the
country, as such an approach would undoubtedly have
disastrous consequences.

A
better approach would be to seek ongoing contacts with Damascus aimed at dispelling any
fantasy-like notions that the regime can bide time and
wait for Lebanon's
sovereignty to go away. Diplomats might also begin
themselves to separate the Syrian and Lebanese files,
making clear to Syrian leaders that they must deal
directly with the UN in upholding their obligations with
regard to the Hariri tribunal, and that pulling strings
in Lebanon
will do nothing to absolve them of these
responsibilities.